[H]ardOCP.com

Was talking to some long-time brothers sisters in the HardForum tonight and spoke to why it has taken me a bit longer to get closer to production with RatPadz OG and thought I would share that reply here. ""My plan was to be at this point in October. Finding the right surface has happened several times already. Finding a company in USA that could provide consistency in surface texture has been a chore. I flew out to one plant, and the sheet they rolled one day, looked nothing like the sheet they rolled next week. The fact is what we are using the material for a purpose that simply no one else is. I have to be extremely picky about the surface texture. I got lucky and the surface we are using for the OG was my favorite. "For the RatPadz XT, that polymer was produced in a plant in Georgia. I had a deal with them on consistency. The sheets that I bought from that company came off one single pair of rollers, so it was the same every time. Big issue here is being a very small fish in a huge pond. "You can DIY your own hard gaming mousepad. Start buying cutting boards till you find one that has the texture you want. Then get out sandpaper and profile the edge how you want. So you are $10 in on the cutting board, and hours down on sanding. If you have a router, bingo. That said, you will not find a surface texture better for gaming and content creation than the one I have picked out by hand since last summer. "My point is however, I found the exact surface I wanted, and I found a company that tells me they can sell me 10s of thousands of sheets that will be exactly the same. It is a big ask. No one else that buys this material gives a damn about consistency. Then to qualify all the manufacturing product as "made in the USA," is something that no one else cares about. Polymers are made from crude oil. Your RatPadz OG most likely came out of the ground in West Texas. Was cracked either in Houston or southern Louisiana, rolled in Georgia or Alabama, and will be shaped and footed in North Texas. And shipped by USPS. All our money is going directly back into the US economy on the production side. "When I made the first gen RatPadz, I never even considered any of this. "The entire OG product is based on digging into the minutia of perfection and patriotism. "Every competitor in this hard mouse pad space is made in China or elsewhere in Asia. I am going to give you a better product than their top end premium product and I am going to either match or cut their price. I am going to give you better customer service. And do it in the USA."

*NVIDIA IS SAID TO QUIETLY PREPARE TO ABANDON TAKEOVER OF ARM $NVDA